Fatal (22 page)

Beuhl took the thought that was in his mind and put it on the table. “This is crazy. You can’t just walk in here with a story like this and expect us to believe you. It’s crazy. I’m crazy for even considering the possibility.”

Cassie faced off with him across the table. These people were her only hope for getting help in this town. Beuhl’s home was the perfect spot. That she had reached it without being discovered was a miracle. If she couldn’t get them to help her directly, she at least had to get Beuhl to allow her to stay until she could come up with a plan for getting Ronnie out.

“You know this isn’t a coincidence. Karen here tells me you saw me in your front yard three days ago. You told her about it. You thought you were going crazy then. Today I show up on your doorstep. Why is anything else so hard to believe? You also told me that you knew there was something hinky about that place. You’ve been watching it. Maybe you have a touch of what I have. What more proof do you need?”

Beuhl was thinking about how nice a beer would be right now, right after breakfast. He was thinking about sitting on his front porch and the seemingly endless line of black Lincolns in and out of the Ag Center. He was thinking about the last night he had spent on the roof, watching men position themselves in the darkness around the building. Like they were waiting for someone. Now this slender little girl shows up on his doorstep as if to affirm his own thoughts. To be honest, she scared him, talking about freeing her boyfriend. It was like seeing a spider web and walking into it anyway.

It was Karen who finally made up his mind. She rose from the table, going upstairs and coming back down with her boots. She sat at the table again and began putting them on. “Excuse us please,” she said to Cassie. “Clayton and I need to speak privately for just a minute.”

They went out on the front porch. Beuhl’s pickup truck sat in the driveway, exactly where it had been when Cassie appeared to him in the night. Karen’s truck was right next to it. Everyone around here drives a damn truck, Beuhl thought. Or a goddamn Black Lincoln. Beuhl sat in his rocker while Karen stood in front of him, absent-mindedly jangling her keys in her hand.

“Listen,” she said. “Look at me. We don’t know what’s going on here, but we do know one thing. That girl needs help. What’s it going to hurt if you give her a place to stay for a few days? You aren’t doing anything anyway. Worst comes to worst you can give her some money and send her on her way. You have plenty of money. But, if what she’s saying is true, and it seems like it is to me, then she’s in a bad spot and you … we … have to help her out.”

She kissed him on the cheek and headed for her truck. “I’ll bring some dinner out when I come over later. In the meantime, call your housekeeper and tell her to take a few days off. Go talk to Cassie.”

With that, she blew him another kiss, got in her truck and drove away, leaving a dusty trail that rose in the still air and settled right back down again. Beuhl sighed and went back inside where Cassie was waiting.

*****

Jennifer Wesling left the cafeteria deeply disturbed. In all her time as an intelligence analyst, her work was derived from unknown sources, bits and pieces she assembled into a coherent form. Rarely did she have any inkling of the source. The process was almost an abstract science, one to which she could apply brutally direct thinking without ever having to worry about the results of her recommendations. That had changed with the coming of Ronnie Gilmore. He seemed a likeable young man, intelligent and insightful.

Luke Francis was obviously out of control, obsessed with the power Ronnie and this Cassie girl represented. He had no regard for their humanity or their lives. Should he gain control of them, he would destroy them. That part was obvious. If his behavior in the cafeteria was any indication he would use them and discard them without any feeling it all, Wesling didn’t intend to see that happen. For one thing, it was wrong and probably illegal. Secondly, she could see a future use for them in the long term. Her decision came partly out of compassion and partly out of a professional interest in working with them down the line. The problem was how to get rid of Francis. She had no authority here and no superior agent to whom she could go and plead her case. Luke Francis was the top of the line. The first order of business was to get Ronnie out of here and into a safer place. Somewhere along the line, his girlfriend had to be located and convinced to come in without a fight. Maybe she could strike a deal, as Archer had. One thing was certain though, her career was at stake and probably her life if Francis found out.

*****

Cassie spent the morning poring over the notebooks Beuhl had created, listing the dates and times of traffic movement around the facility. There was no real pattern she could see, other than that activity had increased noticeably since Ronnie arrived. Beuhl told her about the widow’s walk on top of the house and the activity at night. Francis wasn’t taking any chances. He knew she was coming.

“Getting Ronnie out of there is the first thing on my list,” she told Beuhl later that morning. “If we can get back to New Orleans we’ve got money and new identities waiting for us in a bank down there. That setup was arranged for us a few years back. But I would rather not have to do that. The key here is Luke Francis.”

“Even if you get rid of this guy Francis,” said Beuhl, “You still have the same problem. Someone in the government will just step into his place and you’re right back where you started.”

“No,” said Cassie. “Aside from him, there aren’t that many people in the organization who actually know what we can do. Most of them are compartmentalized. They know they’re looking for me or they know they’re keeping Ronnie under wraps, but they don’t know exactly why. If we can eliminate Francis we have a shot.”

“And by eliminate him you mean what, kill him?” asked Beuhl. “I can’t go along with that. I’m as opposed to the kidnapping and detention of citizens as much as anyone, but I can’t plan on killing someone. That’s way over my head.”

“I’m not going to kill him,” Cassie said. She put down the notebook she was studying. She’d expected some pushback from him, and here it was. She was asking a man she’d barely met to spit in the face of a secret government agency. It was natural that he would be hesitant. What she had going for her was the fact that he was already suspicious when she had arrived. He’d spent weeks watching. He’d crawled onto his roof in the middle of the night to spy on them. He was already di
strustful. She worked on that.

“I don’t plan on killing him, but I will if I have to. You already know something is not right here. It’s in your backyard. Literally, in your backyard. There’s a bigger picture here, also. Right now, Ronnie and I are the only two people they’ve found that can do this type of spying. There has to be more out there. Maybe they’ve already found more.” She shook her head. “We agreed to work for Archer and we did. We compromised. Francis refuses to compromise. He wants to own us, to lock us up. That’s not right and you know it. What’s to stop him from doing it to someone else for any reason he sees fit?”

Beuhl couldn’t argue with that. It was a debate he’d been having with himself for the last few hours, alone on the porch, or on the roof, or in the darkness of his bedroom. He had been pulled along into this thing, or rather, he had put himself into the middle of it. Now that crunch time was here, he couldn’t just back out and stick his head in the sand. He could, however, establish some rules.

“Okay, I’ll help you. But, I’m not killing anyone and I’m not going to sit here and help you plan on killing someone. I still think we could contact the newspapers or the police or someone, and get the thing shut down. It’s worth a try at least.”

Cassie wasn’t having any of it. If Beuhl was on board he had to know, like she did, that there was no getting any outside help. “The newspapers and police are out. They can be controlled. It’s all up to us. We have to fight them ourselves. I promise you though, I won’t do anything I don’t have to do. Okay?”

Beuhl nodded. It was the first and only lie Cassie would ever tell him. Luke Francis had to die. She began to plan on how she could make that happen.

*****

Cassie Reynold was a typical young woman. She wanted all the things any young woman might want, a career, a good husband, kids running around in their own house. It was a dream that began as a young girl and it had never left her. That didn’t mean she was blind to the dual nature of her personality. One side of her was domestic and conventional. The dark side of her personality had emerged in force four years ago under the threat of Thorne and his attempts to control her and Ronnie. The decision always seemed to come down to fight or flight. In her case, she had chosen fight, and the result was the unleashing of her deadliest instincts.

Cassie could kill ruthlessly. She had killed ruthlessly when necessary. It was only afterwards, when all was quiet, that she had questioned herself, her sanity, her belief in her own essential goodness. How those two aspects could exist within one person, Cassie didn’t understand. She just had to accept that it could. It was also something she kept completely within her own thoughts, never expressing them even to Ronnie. It was like being two different people. When the killer was unleashed, all thought left her, and what took over was the cold blooded cunning of an animal with the ability to plan.

First order of business, get him out in the open. She couldn’t kill him if she couldn’t get close to him. She also had to get Ronnie out. If she could force Francis to bring him out, things would be easier. Otherwise, she was looking at infiltrating the facility, or staging some kind of full scale assault. Either way, there were going to be problems. A major concern was keeping Beuhl and Karen out of the line of fire as much as possible. They might be willing to help, but she doubted they would be willing to risk life and limb and freedom for two kids they didn’t know. She gathered one of Beuhl’s notebooks and spent the afternoon on the widow’s walk. When she was done, she had a good feel for the Ag Center and how things were laid out. She went to find Beuhl and found him sitting on the front porch.

“I see you’ve got some hunting rifles in that back room,” she said, getting right to the point. “I’m assuming as a country gentleman you also have ammo for them?”

Beuhl sighed. This little wisp of a girl was going to drag him into the middle of this thing. He was hoping she would come to her senses, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen. He debated backing out, telling Cassie to pack the few things she had and move on. He could give her money, send her on her way. Then he thought of Karen, who had seemed to latch on to Cassie, to believe her, and wanted to help her, from almost the moment she said hello. In a few short days, Karen had taken hold of him, given him something to look forward to. They hadn’t spoken of the future, but from the time he had seen her in the restaurant to the first moments of intimate contact on the hay, and later in his bed, the whole thing had had the feeling of permanence, as if this was what he had been looking for when he came back home. What would she think if he turned his back on Cassie?

“Oh, there’s plenty of ammunition. Top quality stuff, too. My father didn’t do anything half-ass. There’s a bolt action 30-06 in there with a scope and match grade ammo in the cabinet. Are you planning to assassinate someone? If you’re looking for a grassy knoll there’s plenty of those around here.”

“I won’t need a grassy knoll, just a clear line of sight and a vehicle big enough to knock down that fence behind your house. I’ll also need Karen’s help, if she wants to help. Here’s what I’m thinking.” Cassie laid out her plan. It was long on boldness and short on details. It left a lot to be desired, but Beuhl had to admire her audacity. The more she talked the more he got the feeling this kid could take care of herself. She was obviously willing to take on anyone and do anything to get what she wanted. Whatever else he had done, Cassie’s boyfriend had picked himself a humdinger here.

“Besides,” Cassie said, “what else do you have to do? Sit around and watch the grass grow?” Now she smiled and patted Beuhl on the hand. “Think about this, too. That girlfriend of yours? She gets the chance to see you as a hero. Think about what that would do for your love life.”

Beuhl laughed out loud. “Kid, you sure know how to push all the right buttons.”

*****

At precisely midnight, Clayton Beuhl was sitting in the driver’s seat of his tractor, a hundred yards from the corner of the fence line. There was a bottle of Jack Daniels, half empty, on the floor beside him. Some of it he poured onto his shirt, some of it he rubbed onto his pants. He reeked of whiskey. For good measure, he took two solid shots, put the cap back on, and set the bottle down again. He was waiting for Cassie, who had left a half hour before, carrying two five-gallon cans of gasoline, bolt cutters, and the rifle strapped across her back. She also had a half pack of cigarettes and four books of matches. Overhead, there was a slim fingernail moon, enough light to make out a scattering of clouds pushed along by a low breeze. Beuhl checked his watch. Ten minutes passed. He started the tractor. The engine coughed once, caught, stumbled, and settled into a low idle. Beuhl pushed in the clutch and settled the shifter into low gear. Earlier that night, he and Cassie were sitting on top of his house. The men working along the fence line had packed it in. As evening began to fall in earnest, they watched four men make their trek out to the corners of the yard. Men dressed for night work, long sleeves, each carrying a thermos probably filled with coffee. One of them was sucking furiously on a cigarette, his last before long hours of boredom.